The theoretical privacy rights of a jailbird would seem a tenuous basis for a judge to toss the First Amendment and order a Florida newspaper to censor its own website.

But on Nov. 30, Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Jack Schramm Cox ordered the Palm Beach Post to remove transcripts of a convicted murderer’s jailhouse phone calls from the newspaper’s website and to delete any excepts from previously posted stories.

The judge’s order blocked public access to the troubling discourse of convicted killer Frederick “Rock” Cobia, one of South Florida’s most infamous jailhouse informants. Maybe that’s exactly why Cobia’s utterances were erased from a public forum. They revealed the judicial system’s unseemly dependence on the snitch system.